ee great unequal wings.
Underneath rounded the foremast, and above, the little top-sail and
the little gallant-sail, whose bolt-rope quivered with the pranks of
the breeze. The schooner was then running on the larboard tack, and
hugging the wind as much as possible.

Dick Sand explained to Jack how the "Pilgrim," ballasted properly, well
balanced in all her parts, could not capsize, even if she gave a pretty
strong heel to starboard, when the little boy interrupted him.

"What do I see there?" said he.

"You see something, Jack?" demanded Dick Sand, who stood up straight on
the booms.

"Yes--there!" replied little Jack, showing a point of the sea, left
open by the interval between the stays of the standing-jib and the
flying-jib.

Dick Sand looked at the point indicated attentively, and forthwith,
with a loud voice, he cried;

"A wreck to windward, over against starboard!"

* * * * *

CHAPTER III.

THE WRECK.

Dick Sand's cry brought all the crew to their feet. The men who were
not on watch came on deck. Captain Hull, leaving his cabin, went toward
the bow.

Mrs. Weldon, Nan, even the indifferent Cousin Benedict himself, came to
lean over the starboard rail, so as to see the wreck signaled by the
young novice.

Negoro, alone, did not leave the cabin, which served him for a kitchen;
and as usual, of all the crew, he was the only one whom the encounter
with a wreck did not appear to interest.

Then all regarded attentively the floating object which the waves were
rocking, three miles from the "Pilgrim."

"Ah! what can that be?" said a sailor.

"Some abandoned raft," replied another.

"Perhaps there are some unhappy shipwrecked ones on that raft," said
Mrs. Weldon.

"We shall find out," replied Captain Hull. "But that wreck is not a
raft. It is a hull thrown over on the side."

"Ah! is it not more likely to be some marine animal--some mammifer of
great size?" observed Cousin Benedict.

"I do not think so," replied the novice.

"Then what is your idea, Dick?" asked Mrs. Weldon.

"An overturned hull, as the captain has said, Mrs. Weldon. It even
seems to me that I see its copper keel glistening in the sun."

"Yes--indeed," replied Captain Hull. Then addressing the helmsman:
"Steer to the windward, Bolton. Let her go a quarter, so as to come
alongside the wreck."

"Yes, sir," replied the helmsman.

"But," continued Cousin Benedict, "I keep to what I have